Channelling the famous painting American Gothic (1930) by Grant Wood, Jill Spicer is ready for more time with her rake and other garden tools. Photo / Judith Lacy
Channelling the famous painting American Gothic (1930) by Grant Wood, Jill Spicer is ready for more time with her rake and other garden tools. Photo / Judith Lacy
Jill Spicer finds other people’s lives fascinating.
But after 15 years coordinating the New Zealand Red Cross Annual Book Sale in Palmerston North the reading light is well and truly on Spicer as she hangs up her clipboard.
Her garden is calling.
The first surprise - Spicer is Australian-born andraised.
When Spicer retired from teaching English as a second language at Massey University she put her hand up to coordinate the gargantuan sale held on the monarch’s birthday weekend.
She likes books and thought the volunteer role was something she would like to do.
Heather Tanguay, then Red Cross Palmerston North manager and later mayor, started the sale in 1991.
Spicer says coordinating the sale is like conducting an orchestra. At the bottom of all those organising emails she sends is a quote from Dutch author Rutger Bregman. “Our secret superpower is our ability to cooperate.”
The challenge of the sale is the 1001 details - for want of a nail the battle was lost.
Are the right people in the right place? Is there enough of X? When is Y coming and who is bringing it?
The goodwill from volunteers and businesses kept her going.
Spicer has learned not to be worried about asking for donations or assistance. “If you ask people they are usually very happy to help.”
Setting up the four-day sale began on Sunday and about 350 people will volunteer their time.
Asked what she has learned about books, Spicer replies: “There’s too many in the world. Never write a book, there’s too many already.”
Red Cross is donated books that must have come out on sailing ships. Spicer is intrigued by the choices these European migrants made. They were coming to New Zealand for the rest of their life, had limited space and chose to bring this book.
Spicer was born in Sydney and when she finished high school she moved to Melbourne with her mother, a Unilever executive. Her father had already died.
She went to teachers’ college - the choice then was teacher, nurse or secretary, she says.
Next came an OE in England where she worked as an au pair in Cambridge. She met and married English psychologist Dr John Spicer.
John got a job at the University of Auckland after Jill’s mother heard a radio interview with a man who worked in the same field as John. Jill taught at Ōtara. Moving to New Zealand was the “best move we ever made”.
Her mother had ended up in Palmerston North after marrying a Kiwi she met in Spain.
After three years in Auckland, the Spicers moved to Michigan in the United States for a year, then John got a job at Massey University. They are no longer together but Jill has remained in Palmerston North.
Jill considers her generation, born after World War II, the luckiest. If they wanted a job they could get one and they could buy a house on one salary.
“Life was easy and we expected it to keep on getting better and better which it did.”
Spicer has two sons - one in Wellington and one in Melbourne, one granddaughter and one grandson.
One of the joys of being a book sorter is the huge variety of books you handle and the whole new worlds to discover. “I sometimes think all of Western culture - recent and past - passes through the book sorting room.”
Her favourite category is women’s biography. She tries to avoid packing this category so she doesn’t come home with more books to join the ever-growing piles at her home.
She has lived there since 1981. “I bought a garden with a house attached.”
After 15 years coordinating the New Zealand Red Cross Annual Book Sale in Palmerston North, Jill Spicer is ready to spend more time in her garden. Photo / Judith Lacy
Spicer says she is driven to garden; no matter where she has lived in the world she has had a garden.
The book sale is on Friday 10am-8pm, Saturday 10am-6pm, Sunday 10am-4pm, and Monday 10am-2pm.
There are also comics, puzzles, games, records, CDs, DVDs, sheet music and maps. Non-fiction categories range from penguins to paranormal, ballet to beliefs.
Dealers come from all over the North Island. They are admitted at the same time as the other bargain hunters so everyone gets the same shopping experience, Spicer says.
